1. Field
Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless communication systems, and more particularly, to supporting energy efficient signaling in a network device and/or a user equipment.
2. Background
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless networks may be multiple-access networks capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available network resources. Examples of such multiple-access networks include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) networks, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) networks, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) networks.
A wireless communication network may include a number of base stations, also referred to as nodeBs or eNodeBs (eNBs), which can support communication for a number of user equipments (UEs). A UE may communicate with a base station via a downlink and an uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to a communication link from the base station to the UE, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to a communication link from the UE to the base station. In an example, a base station can assign a number of downlink and/or uplink resources to a UE. Moreover, the base station can allow the UE to establish multiple carriers for communicating with the base station over the downlink or uplink using multiple physical or virtual antennas or other radio resources to improve communication throughput.
Due to the ever increasing popularity of wireless communications, efficiently utilizing the limited resources of both the base stations and UEs has become a concern.
One manner in which this concern is addressed in 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) Release 11 (Rel-11) through the definition of a new carrier type, also referred to as an extension carrier, which may provide enhanced spectral efficiency by removing unneeded synchronization signals, and which also may provide enhanced energy efficiency.
Moreover, current agreements or operating assumptions include the base station transmitting certain synchronization signals with increased periodicity. The proposed increase in separation of the synchronization signals may not provide sufficient energy savings, however, and further separation of the signals may lead to possible delays in communications as well as possible user congestion.
Accordingly, improved mechanisms or techniques for more energy efficient signaling are desired.